Nygaard comes home with a show at The Palms

Claudia Nygaard spent most of her childhood carrying irrigation pipe with her father across the land they ran cattle on outside of Elk Grove, just 20 minutes south of Sacramento. She picked up the guitar and hit the road just out of college, and never looked back, but she has been back to perform plenty of times.

She got her start singing in bars, then moved on to perform at state and county fairs all over the country. Nygaard’s touring brought her home frequently to perform at the California State Fair and fairs in Dixon, Petaluma, Napa, Stockton, Placerville and Amador County.

It was during this period of her career that she began slipping her original songs into her shows. When they began receiving a better response than the cover songs, she made the move to Nashville, where she’s based now. On Thursday night, she brings her highly acclaimed songs home to Northern California with a show at The Palms Playhouse, 13 Main St. in downtown Winters. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 and available at the door.

Nygaard’s latest CD, “Let The Storm Roll In,” is a collection of songs that range from scrappy to sensual and humorous to heartfelt, and every one of these little slices of Americana has received radio airplay. The CD has cross-platformed onto three separate radio charts, climbing up to No. 1 on the Roots Country Chart, No. 8 on the Folk DJ Chart and No. 26 on the Roots Music Americana Chart.

It also received high praise from both domestic and international press, garnering five stars from Maverick Magazine in the U.K., and a review in Sing out Magazine that claimed her songs “rival the likes of Guy Clark or Ian Tyson in their plainspoken, memoir-like quality…”

Described by reviewers as “Will Rogers without the rope” for her affable connection with an audience, Nygaard is an engaging performer with a quick wit and a fearless emotional availability. The stories she weaves in between the songs are as captivating as the songs themselves.